Suddenly, the wound began to hurt him terribly.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” he said.
They drove off.
“Oh, Fazio, another thing . . . ,” he continued with great effort, running a dry tongue over his parched lips, “don’t forget . . . don’t forget . . . to tell Pontius Pilate . . . he’s at the Hotel Regina.”
Madunnuzza santa! Now he’s raving about Pontius Pilate! Fazio humored him, as one does with the insane.
“Of course we’ll tell him, Chief, of course. Just stay calm. I’ll do it myself, first thing.”
It was too much of an effort to talk, to explain. Montalbano let himself go, falling into a half swoon. Fazio, all sweaty from the fright these meaningless words were giving him, leaned forward and whispered to Gallo:
“Come on, for Chrissakes, step on it! Can’t you see the Chief’s not right in the head?”
Author’s Note
The names, characters, and situations represented in this novel are, of course, wholly invented.
The statistics on the illegal immigration of minors into Italy, on the other hand, are drawn from an investigation by Carmelo Abbate and Paolo Ciccioli, published in the September 19, 2002, edition of Panorama, and the information on the human traffickers derives from an article published in the September 26, 2002, edition of the Italian daily, La Repubblica . The story of the phony death was likewise suggested to me by a news item (Gazzetta del Sud, August 17, 20, and 24, 2002).
Notes
1 octopus a strascinasali or sardines a beccafico: Octopus a strascinasali consists of small octopi (polipetti in Italian, purpiteddri or frajeddi in Sicilian) simply boiled in salted water, then dressed in olive oil and lemon juice. Sarde a beccafico is a famous Sicilian specialty named after a small bird, the beccafico (Sylvia borin, garden warbler in English), which is particularly fond of figs (beccafico means “fig-pecker”). The headless, cleaned sardines are stuffed with sautéed breadcrumbs, pine nuts, sultana raisins, and anchovies, then rolled up in such a way that they resemble the bird when they come out of the oven.
1 the police raid of the Diaz School during the G8 meetings in Genoa: The G8 meetings held in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, were marred by unusual violence by the forces of order against protesters, culminating in the shooting death of a young man who had threatened a group of carabinieri with a fire extinguisher. Among the brutal police tactics was the nighttime raid of the Diaz School, where a number of protesters and independent journalists were staying. All of the details related by Camilleri in regard to this event, including his assertion that high functionaries of the police bureaucracy were involved in the Diaz raid, are true and well documented in the mainstream press. Many of those attacked by police during the raid, including British freelance journalist Mark Covell, were severely injured; others were taken from the school to a temporary detention center called Bolzaneto, where they were subject to further beatings and humiliation. Two separate trials against no fewer than seventy-three members of police, carabinieri, and prison officers were ongoing as of December 2005, with charges including abuse of authority and unlawful violence, as well as trespass, false arrest, inflicting or authorizing grievous bodily harm, not to mention fabricating the evidence intended to justify the raid at the Diaz School.
2 as the government watchfully looked on: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon in his own right, is known to exercise tight control on the news and information propagated in private as well as state-owned media.
2 brought to mind long-buried episodes of the Fascist police or the Scelba period: Minister of the interior during successive postwar governments from 1947 to 1953, Mario Scelba (1901-1991) was a fierce anti-Communist known for his brutal repression of demonstrations and his use of the police and antiriot squads to that end.
6 Imagine ever finding any obscene graffiti in Sicily without the word “cuckold” in it! The Italian word for cuckold, cornuto, a common insult throughout the country, is a special favorite among southerners, Sicilians in particular.
9 solitary walks along the jetty . . . hours spent sitting on the rock of tears: As described in earlier books in this series, the inspector is fond of taking solitary walks along the jetty in the port of Vigàta. Under the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, there is a rock, one of the many that make up the breakwater, on which he likes to sit to collect his thoughts. It was on this rock that he first came to terms with his father’s death and wept for him, whence the name, the “rock of tears.” (See A. Camilleri, The Snack Thief and subsequent books in the series.)
9 càlia e simenza: A mix of chickpeas and pumpkin seeds, and sometimes peanuts. There is a shop at the start of the jetty that sells this snack, often an integral part of Montalbano’s solitary walks. (See previous note.)
24 “My husband Angelo and I are both from Treviso”: Treviso is in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, one of the strongholds of the Northern League, a right-wing, anti-Southern political party.
28 L’Avvenire and Famiglia Cristiana: L’Avvenire (which means “The Future”) is a Catholic daily; Famiglia Cristiana is a weekly magazine published by the Catholic Church.
28 E passeranno i giorni: “And the days will go by.” A line from the aria Ch’ella mi creda, in La Fanciulla del West, an opera by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924).
29 Nothing but angels up there: Aside from observing that all the persons are named either Angelo or Angela, Montalbano is making a wry comment on the staunch Catholicism for which the people of the Veneto are well-known, and on the hypocrisy that allows them to consider themselves more virtuous than the Sicilians.
38 “Here, Ingrid, . . . I can’t keep up with you”: Ingrid is a former race-car driver. (See A. Camilleri, The Shape of Water.)
53 the inspector thought of François, the Tunisian boy who could have become his son, . . . : See A. Camilleri, The Snack Thief and Voice of the Violin.
57 Cozzi-Pini law: A thinly disguised reference to the Bossi-Fini law, conceived by Umberto Bossi and Gianfranco Fini, respective leaders of the xenophobic Northern League and the National Alliance, a right-wing party descended directly from the neo-Fascist MSI party founded after World War II. Enacted in 2002 by the Italian parliament, with the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and these two smaller parties holding an absolute majority, this heavy-handed law, among its many provisions: (1) makes it illegal for individuals not belonging to European Union member nations to enter the country without a work contract; (2) requires all non-E.U. individuals who lose their jobs while in the country to repatriate to their country of origin; (3) abolishes the sponsorship system that had previously enabled non-E.U. individuals to enter the country under the patronage of a sponsor already in Italy; (4) establishes the government’s right to decree a quota of the number of non-E.U. individuals allowed to enter the country over the period of one year; and (5) makes all foreign nationals not in conformity with these new guidelines subject to criminal proceedings and/or forced repatriation.